CARRIERES-SOUS-POISSY (78) 01.10.2011

On 1 October 2011 at about 17:00, 4 people in a garden in Carrières-sous-Poissy (78) were frightened by an oval object falling rapidly from the sky. Shaped like a capsule, it lay horizontally, oscillated and rotated. It was gray with a metallic appearance. Afraid of being crushed, they left the garden and fled by car. They alerted passersby, who saw nothing because trees blocked the sky. A few hundred meters away, they stopped near a stadium and looked back but could no longer see it. Another person encountered by the main witness said the object had headed toward Triel-sur-Seine (78), to the north-northwest. The puzzled witnesses returned home. Because it moved with the wind (see the investigation report), a lighter-than-air balloon is preferred. Some hobbyists use tubular balloons. The rotating, windborne movement fits that explanation. Gray plastic film used for these balloons looks metallic when inflated and sunlit. The witnesses could not estimate its size or distance accurately because they had never seen this type of object. The source's proposed modest size, about 3 m, also explains why so few people noticed it. GEIPAN classifies the case B: probable tubular thermal balloon.